Books for Christmas: Food

The best books to give gourmands as Christmas gifts, from the likes of Ferran
Adria, Rick Stein and the Modern Pantry

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A piscophobe's quest to conquer fear of fish yields a beautiful book: Jake Tilson's 'In At The Deep End'

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Penguin's small library of classic foodie texts is perfect for greedy literature-lovers

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A 'Private Eye' parody? No, this really is 'The Family Meal: Home Cooking with Ferran Adrià'

By Aileen Reid

7:00AM GMT 08 Dec 2011

The Family Meal: Home Cooking with Ferran Adrià by Ferran Adrià and Eugeni de Diego (Phaidon Press, £19.95)

Ferran Adrià made his name with El Bulli, where he brought high-concept science-infused cooking to a pitch of fiddly perfection, so Home Cooking with Ferran Adrià sounds like a Private Eye parody. Even chefs have to eat, though, and every day a family meal would be prepared for El Bulli’s 75 staff. With a gentle pedagogical tone, this good-value big book takes the reader through 31 of these whole-meal menus.

Last year Jamie Oliver’s 30-Minute Meals was widely reviled for having recipes taking more than an hour and leaving the kitchen like a bomb-site. If our sample menu was typical (salad of apples & pears, blue cheese & watercress; open roast garlic and field mushroom lasagne with mollica; plum & prune maple syrup oak crumble, and a lie-down), Annie Nichols’s suggested hour is quite realistic. The unusually varied and tempting recipes are also set out individually.

River Cottage Veg Every Day! by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (Bloomsbury, £25)

Twenty years ago, Hugh Twirly-Hairstyle (as we wits on the subeditors’ desk called him) was a lowly food hack on the pages of this very newspaper. Now he is a multi-award-winning television superstar, his books bestsellers. For good reason. He was as passionate in his “rear it, kill it, cook it phase”, as he is now with veg. Divided into no-nonsense sections, the book is full of things a carnivore might actually want to eat: a winter stir-fry with Brussels sprouts, shiitake mushrooms and five-spice; a spring onion galette. There is a photograph of every dish, not too much waffle and spot on serving suggestions.

Japanese food in Britain has evolved from super-expensive restaurant fare to – literally – conveyor-belt sushi in barely 20 years. It is rare to be served it in someone’s (or someone non-Japanese’s) home, though. Reiko Hashimoto aims to change that with her cookery courses, the inspiration for this attractive, ambitious book, designed to satisfy both the “curious beginner” and the “seasoned expert”. As you would expect, it is clearly laid out with sections on ingredients and equipment, staple stocks, sauces and rices, sushi and “gourmet dishes”. She also offers a guide to basic Japanese food etiquette (which could fill several books).

Great Food Box Set, various authors (Penguin, £140)

One hesitates to recommend a book costing £140: not all our readers are bankers, I realise. But a) this is not one book but a small library of 20 books and b) you’ll find it for around half the price online. They are reprints of historic foodie texts, high-flown and lowbrow, well-known and obscure, ranging from Gervase Markham’s advice to Jacobean housewives, through Samuel Pepys’ The Joys of Excess (he should know) right up to Alice Waters and Claudia Roden.

The least show-offy of television chefs turns out a lot of books but I have yet to see one that did not delight the eye or moisten the taste bud. As usual, he gets beneath a country’s surface to explore the variety of its food, which in Spain is prodigious. Each regional chapter sets the scene, from the kind, unsmiling people of rocky Galicia with their octopus and mussels in the north west, to the fiery, flamenco-mad Andalusians with their Arab-infused food in the south.

Desserts by Michel Roux (Quadrille, £14.99)

Recently, contestants on the BBC’s Masterchef: The Professionals have been quaking before the sea-green incorruptible, Michel Roux, who doesn’t look like he eats pudding. This delightful little chunky, good-value book, though, is the work of the ur-Michel Roux: his uncle, of Le Gavroche and Waterside Inn fame. He is a particular expert on desserts and gives you 120 recipes (fruit desserts, crèmes and sabayons, tarts and pastries), with guides to techniques, ingredients and a glossary.

The Modern Pantry Cookbook by Anna Hansen (Ebury Press, £25)

Anna Hansen has had a big hit in the past three years with the Modern Pantry, her unfussy restaurant in Clerkenwell. Her food reflects an unusual blend of influences: a Danish grandmother, an upbringing in New Zealand and training with the chefs behind the French House, St John and the Sugar Club. Her book shows you how to emulate her style which is idiosyncratic, but not tricksy. Some dishes result from single-minded experimentation, e.g. sugar-cured prawn omelette with smoked chilli sambal (the Modern Pantry’s signature dish). Others combine the familiar and unfamiliar to sensational effect: grilled mackerel with squid ink mash and red pepper and yuzu dressing; cumin-roast parsnip and plantain mash. The ingredients can sound daunting but you can find anything online these days.

In At The Deep End: Cooking Fish Venice to Tokyo by Jake Tilson (Quadrille, £20)

The enjoyment of food is about the eye as much as the mouth. The designer, gourmet and self-confessed piscophobe Jake Tilson acknowledges this with In At The Deep End, a personal mix of graphics, typography and photographs. It also serves as recipe book and travelogue of his quest to buy, cook, and eat seafood – in Venice, Sweden, New York, Aberdeenshire and Sydney – as a means of overcoming his fear.